Welcome to my blog! This will be focused on Performance Analysis within football with a heavy slant towards the English Championship & Scottish SPL.
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Tuesday, 16 April 2013

A lot has been said recently about Performance
Analysis internships within football. Reading advertising a year long, full time,
unpaid internship sparked a debate which was even picked up by the Independent
and various fair trade organisations.

I have commented previously on my experiences
with internships (as one myself I feel in a good position to comment but my
experiences won’t be the same as everybody’s)

The furore kicked up seems to chiefly criticise
Reading but anybody who has finished University or has a background in
performance and has tried to get a job within football knows full well the
difficulties in getting a paid job, especially in an emerging field such as
Performance Analysis

I had planned to do this post closer to the
summer when I knew the internship opportunities would start rolling around
again but many clubs seem more organised for next year and are advertising
posts for the 2013/14 season early!!

Analysis of Advertised Jobs

For the past 18 Months for my own benefit I’ve
been keeping a log of all performance analysis jobs advertised across a variety
of sites. These are all jobs both paid and unpaid and was initially so I could
keep track of which ones to apply for but it became evident that a lot of the
jobs were unpaid that were advertised.

Now, football is a secretive business that most
people will never know the insides of. Many jobs, even at Performance Analysis
level are “headhunted” and therefore never advertised, so it may be a little
one sided but most people WON’T already have a job and will look extensively on
the websites to see what is available

The graphic below shows the breakdown of jobs
that have been advertised over the past 18 months, broken down by the stated
remuneration.

So, it’s not a recent thing that almost all
advertised performance analysis jobs come with very little expectation of an
initial salary. It’s great that this argument is seeing the light of day but to
haul Reading in particular over the coals is a little unfair on them.

The graph attached does show that the majority
of paid jobs come from Premier League clubs. This is along with the presumed
expectation that more jobs are headhunted behind the scenes by Premier League
clubs, while not fully exonerating offering unpaid internships, means at least
they are trying. The problem actually comes lower down the leagues, where there
is less money, but more unpaid positions. Does a lack of money in the budget
excuse a club hiring somebody unpaid? If you can’t afford a commodity then
surely you don’t buy it, getting it for free isn’t really an ethical way to do
it.

All the above just covers the jobs advertised
within Performance Analysis, I have to say I also see a lot of jobs within the
other Sports Science disciplines which are advertised as internships just as
much, particularly Strength & Conditioning ones. I don’t record these as
it’s not an area I’m interested in but I’m sure there are plenty advertised
which are unpaid across the various divisions. There also seems to be a
difference in pay between the salaried Sports Science jobs and Performance
Analysis jobs, but that’s probably another issue entirely!!

Another point to mention in all this is that a
lot of clubs have links with universities for placement students and instead of
offering internships do things that way. There’s still a debate about this,
while it’s great that students are getting exposure and see the actual workings
of a club, they are still essentially working for free. I did a sandwich course
at university (albeit in business) but I got paid for my year out, learning my
trade whilst also contributing to the running of the business. Should football
be any different?

Positives & Negatives

Of course, even if the internships are unpaid
there are positives and negatives. I’ve evaluated some below.

Positives

In the right situations the learning experience
is something you wouldn’t get in any other circumstances. The chance to learn
from paid professionals acting as a mentor is unrivalled and you can be exposed
to situations that you can’t be prepared for in a classroom.

Of course this is only the case if you are
learning and not either just doing a job and they aren’t paying you (in which
case it shouldn’t be classed as an internship it should be a voluntary post) or
if there is nobody able to teach you any additional skills.

Second point is, if football clubs didn’t
advertise internships would there be an opportunity at all for performance
analysis within the professional game? Who knows the answer to the one but
football is historically resistant to change and if they would be forced to pay
somebody would they be able to squeeze it from the budget.

The third point is the chance to showcase your
abilities and have a chance of being taken on permanently. Many clubs use the
Internships as a “proving ground” (notably Blackburn and West Brom but I’m sure
it’s the case in many clubs) the problem comes when at the end of the
internship no paid job is available and the club then puts out another advert
for another intern. If the post is basically a work trial then at least it has
some benefits.

Negatives

Obviously the lack of pay for a full year will
put off most people. The full time posts (such as the one’s recently advertised
by Reading & Huddersfield Town) even restrict you from taking on a second
job to at least make some money to live off. This makes a lot of internships
elitist in that only those who can be financially supported or have a lot of
savings (something most post grad students won’t have). On a personal level I
work a full time job and a casual job and do my part time internship in
addition to these, regularly working up to 60 hours per week. I would in no way
be in a position to leave my paid job to do it unpaid.

By not paying for somebody to do a role, the
club is restricting the potential skill base from which they are employing
somebody. The best analyst in the country may not be able to prove it as he
can’t take on an unpaid job.

While there are obvious exceptions, from the
feel I get from the community it seems that the internships don’t often lead to
paid jobs and the drop off from people who leave university then do an internship but then follow a
different career path due to lack of jobs is very high. I have no foundation to
back this up, this is just general feeling from the connections I have made. It
is true that you regularly see the same internships offered each season so it
makes sense that whoever was previously been doing the job hasn’t been taken
on.

While the learning element has been discussed
in the positives, there are many occasions when internships just seem to be
used to do the jobs that either the analyst doesn’t want to do or are seen as
basic. In my opinion just tagging clips in SportsCode does NOT make you an
analyst and I don’t think you need a university degree to do this! Football clubs
as still resistant to genuine analytics as has recently been discussed at the
Sloan Sports Conference (again, there are exceptions) but it is incredibly hard
for an intern to get their ideas across and make a genuine difference rather
than just doing what they’ve been told to do.

The criteria & demands on many interns are
massive. Almost all jobs ask for at least a Degree (in fact 4 of the 55 unpaid
jobs asked for a Masters, including unbelievably a non-league team!!) and the
expected return from the club such as unsociable and long hours don’t measure
up against the rewards in most cases.

Other Points to Note

When the EPPP was launched the rumour was that
it would cause a “boom” in the number of performance analysis jobs. While it is
good that the Premier League sees the value in performance analysis there is a
get out clause in the criteria within the rules

93. Each Club which operates
a Category 1 Academy shall employ a minimum of two Full Time Performance
Analysts.

94. Each Club which operates
a Category 2 Academy shall employ a minimum of two Performance Analysts, one
on a Full Time basis, and the other at least Part Time.

Nowhere does it say they need to be paid, so do the EPPP rules encourage employing performance analysts or internships? As yet this expected boom doesn’t seem to have materialised (although a lot of clubs are still waiting for their grading)

Although the Premier League clubs have shown to
employ more paid employees than the other divisions, the argument still remains
that if the Premier League clubs, with all the money they have coming in, are
happy to take on unpaid interns then why should clubs lower down the league
ladder, who have much less available budget to spend on areas they still see as
non-essential?

The main bone of contention with the recent
Reading internship was that it was full time. The argument then stretches that
should a part time intern be paid? The difference being that if you work
part-time you could quite reasonably have another part-time job to earn some
money which you could live on. While this is a reasonable assumption it still
doesn’t excuse the fact that you are basically doing a job unpaid for a year
(or more in many cases). Do football clubs look at CV’s and think – this guys
worked full time plus done 2 other jobs, he’s obviously a hard worker. From the
people I’ve spoken to within the game when clubs interview they are only
interested in what you can do, not what you’ve done.

An option may be to cap the length of the
internship. If somebody does a job for say 3 months unpaid, surely they’ve
learnt a hell of a lot in that time? Should they then either be paid or have
the skills to get a job elsewhere? The problem with this is that most clubs
want consistency across a full league season and often don’t have the time to
continuously be training interns, but if that is the case should they have
interns, who they are supposed to be mentoring in the first place?

Conclusion

The main concern with internships is how is
somebody supposed to live with no money for a year. If the opportunity was
there for a paid job afterwards at least there would be a carrot to aim towards
but often the same clubs advertise for the same internship positions season
after season.

There are some clubs who should be commended.
Norwich City have taken on several paid positions, as have Brighton & Hove
Albion. Sheffield United have advertised for both paid and unpaid roles and the
opportunity seems to be there to grow into a role. West Brom, after advertising
for an unpaid role last year, have now offered a small salary (below minimum
wage but at least it’s something)

In fact the best opportunities for Performance
Analysts seem to come from analysis companies rather than clubs. Prozone, Opta,
Onside Analysis & Venatrack have all advertised for paid jobs within the
last 12 months. The growth in genuine analytics has been massive in the
industry but it is the clubs that are resistant to this.

Fletcher is adamant that the practice of
unpaid internships should continue.

"If I had the choice of sending my son
to go and work at a Premier League club for free or to stack shelves in a
supermarket for 12 months, then I would send him to a Premier League
club," he said.

I’m sure this is fine for Mr Fletcher (an
ex-professional footballer) who can afford to send his son to work somewhere
unpaid for 12 months. The question he should be asking is why should he have to
choose? Why should both jobs not be paid? Can the supermarket afford it more
than a Premier League football club!?

A Reading FC spokesman said: “Internships
are an important part of career progression and experience building for any
individual starting out on the path to their dream job.”

The key phrase here is “Dream Job”. Football
clubs are acutely aware that people will work for free – because it’s football.
It is most people’s dream job, it’s certainly the closest I’ll ever get. Does
this mean people should do it unpaid? Not at all and it is purely exploitative
of clubs to think that way.

I’m not asking for the earth, I don’t expect to
be paid as much as Yaya Toure or Wayne Rooney, but if I’m doing a job that is
valued I would at least expect to be paid enough to live on. I want to make a
difference and help a team excel and achieve their potential, the sooner clubs
realise the talent pool they are missing out on the better.

About Me

I currently work as a Performance Analyst on a full time basis for Onside Analysis.
After a few years of pursuing my dream job including working for Rotherham United, Coventry City Ladies and Barnsley, I am finally doing for a living some I love.